Search form

Status: A More Accurate Way of Understanding Self-Esteem.

Brain research is doing two things. In part it is explaining the underpinning functioning of things we already know, like the importance of mindfulness (see last week's post). However, some research also points to the need for a major overhaul in our thinking. This appears to be the case with self-esteem.

While there's no question that there's a deep human drive for a feeling of self-esteem or competence, this feeling of competence is almost never assessed on it's own: we are social beings at the core, and as such our sense of competence appears to be deeply connected to others around us. Self-esteem may not be an accurate way of understanding this feeling of 'okayness', when we actually measure this constantly against others. Instead of self-esteem, we need to start thinking about the more dynamic sense of 'status'.

Maintaining the status quoStatus explains why people will queue for hours on a frosty morning to get a signed copy of a TV celebrity's new book, (a book they have no plan to read). Status explains why people feel good meeting someone worse off than themselves, the German concept of "Schadenfreude", with a study showing that reward circuits activate in this situation. Status even explains why people love to win arguments, even pointless ones. Status explains a tremendous number of strange occurances in life.

Status is relative, and a sense of reward from an increase in status can come anytime you feel "better than" another person. Your brain maintains complex maps for the "pecking order" of the people surrounding you. These maps have a similar structure to how you think about numbers. Studies show that you create a representation of your own and someone else's status in the brain when you communicate, which influences how you interact with others.

Changes in a pecking order brings about changes in how millions of neurons are connected. If you have ever been in a relationship in which one partner unexpectedly begins earning more money than the other, you would have felt these wide-scale changes in brain circuitry take place, and the related challenges. Organizations set up complex and well-defined hierarchies, and then try to motivate people with the promise of moving up within that hierarchy. One company won't let you face your desk toward the window until you move from a "band 30" to a "band 35" role, even though you might sit next to a "band 35". Marketing departments use two main levers to engage human emotions: fear, and the promise of increased status.

Despite attempts by corporations to make status about the size of your car or the cost of your watch, there's no universal scale for status. When you meet someone new and size up your relative importance, you might do so based on who is older, richer, stronger, smarter, or funnier. (Or if you live in some Pacific Islands, based on who weighs more.) Whatever framework you think is important, when your perceived sense of status goes up, or down, an intense emotional response results. As a result, people go to tremendous extremes to increase or protect their status. It operates at an individual and group level, and even at the level of countries. The desire to increase status is behind many of society's greatest achievements and some our darker hours of destruction.

On the way downAs with all emotional experiences, with status the threat response is stronger and more common than the reward response. Just speaking to someone you perceive to be of a higher status, such as your boss, can activate a strong threat response. A perceived threat to status feels like it could come with terrible consequences. The response is visceral, including a flood of cortisol to the blood and a rush of resources to the limbic system that inhibits clear thinking.

Naomi Eisenberger, a leading social neuroscience researcher at UCLA, wanted to understand what goes on in the brain when people feel rejected by others. She designed an experiment that used fMRI to scan the brains of participants as they played a computer game called "Cyberball." Cyberball harks back to the nastiness of the school playground. "People thought they were playing a ball tossing game over the Internet with two other people," Eisenberger explained during an interview down the road from her lab. "They could see an avatar that represented them, and avatars for two other people. Then, about half way through this game of toss between the three of them, they stop receiving the ball and the other players throw the ball only to each other." This experiment generates intense emotions for most people. Eisenberger says, "What we found is that when people were excluded, you see activity in the dorsal portion of the anterior cingulate cortex, which is the neural region that's also involved in the distressing component of pain, or what sometimes people call the "suffering component" of pain. Those people who felt the most rejected had the highest levels of activity in this region." Exclusion and rejection is physiologically painful. A feeling of being less than other people, activates the same brain regions as physical pain. Eisenberger's study showed five different physical-pain brain regions lighting up under this social-pain experiment. Social pain can be as painful as physical pain, as the two appear synonymous in the brain.

The real trouble with feedbackThink of the drop in your stomach when someone says to you, "Can I give you some feedback?" It's a similar feeling to walking alone at night and sensing that someone is about to attack you from behind: perhaps not as intense but it's the same fear response. This discovery about the brain explains why people sometimes react with the human equivalent of a dog baring its teeth and growling when you tell them they've done something wrong: their brain thinks someone is about to hit them. Because of the intensity of the status-drop experience, people go to great lengths to avoid situations that might risk their sense of status. This includes staying away from any activity they are not confident in, which, because of the brain's relationship to novelty, can mean avoid anything new, impacting quality of life.

The threat response from a perceived drop in status can take on a life of its own, lasting for years. People work hard to avoid being "wrong" in a situation, from a simple typesetting mistake, to an error of judgment about a major strategy. Think of some of the big corporate mergers that have gone bad, and the executives involved avoiding any responsibility. People don't like to be wrong because being wrong drops your status, in a way that feels dangerous and unnerving.

When you decide you are right, the other person must be wrong, which means you don't listen to what he or she says, and he or she experiences you as a threat too. A vicious cycle emerges. Being "right" is often more important to people than, well, than just about anything else, at the cost of not just money but relationships, health, and sometimes even life itself.

As well as sometimes taking on a life of its own, the other trouble with status threats is how easily they can occur, generating a strong threat even in minor situations. Say you are at a meeting with a colleague, and for the first time in your working relationship, he asks to follow up with you about a project. It's likely you will interpret his request as a threat to your status: Doesn't he trust you? Is he checking up on you? Your threat response could make you say something harmful to your career. Remember that the limbic system once aroused makes accidental connections and thinks pessimistically. Just speaking to your boss arouses a threat. If you manage someone, just asking how his or her day is going can carry more emotional weight than one might think. I propose that many of the arguments and conflicts at work, and in life, have status issues at their core. The more you can label status threats as they occur, in real time, the easier it will be to respond more appropriately.

On the way upI interviewed an international ballet dancer who used to be a member of the London Royal Ballet. She told me how she was often bored and frustrated as one of many dancers, even though she was in a world-class troupe. That all changed when she moved to a smaller, less known, troupe in her home city, but now was the leading soloist. She explained, "Finally I am the highest paid dancer in the company. I am the one at the front of the room. The minute you're at the front of the room, there's no boredom at all. The focus is on you, the space is your space, you feel at the top."

Studies of primate communities show that higher status monkeys have reduced day-to-day cortisol levels, are healthier, and live longer. This isn't just monkey business (sorry for the pun.) There is an entire book, The Status Syndrome by Michael Marmot, illustrating that status is a significant determinant of human longevity, even controlling for education and income. High status doesn't just feel good. It brings along very real rewards, too.

Status is rewarding not just when you have achieved high status, but also anytime you feel like your status has increased, even in a small way. One study showed that saying to kids "good job" in a monotonous recorded voice activated the reward circuitry in kids as much as a financial windfall. Even little status increases, like beating someone at a card game, feel great. We're wired to feel rewarded by just about any incremental increase in status. Many of the world's great narratives (and some of our not so great television franchises) have status at their core, based on two recurring themes. These stories involve either ordinary people doing extraordinary things (giving you hope you could have higher status one day) or extraordinary people doing ordinary things (giving you hope that even though may be ordinary, you are basically the same as people with high status.) Even an increase in hope that your status might go up one day seems to pack a reward.

An increase in status is one of the world's greatest feelings. Dopamine and serotonin levels go up, linked to feeling happier, and cortisol levels go down, a marker of lower stress. Testosterone levels go up too. Testosterone helps people focus, feel strong and confident, and even improves sex drive. With more dopamine and other "happy" neurochemicals, an increase in status increases the number of new connections made per hour in the brain. This means that a feeling of high status helps you process more information, including more subtle ideas, with less effort. With the reduced threat response, you are more able to think on multiple levels at once.

People with higher status are better able to follow through with their intentions more-they have more control, more support, and more attention from others. Being in a high-status state helps you make the connections that your brain expects to make, which puts you in an upward spiral toward even more positive neurochemistry. This may well be the neurochemistry of "getting on a roll."

Getting and staying on a highYou can elevate your status by finding a way to feel smarter / funnier / healthier / richer / more righteous / more organized / fitter / stronger or by beating other people at just about anything at all. The key is to find a "niche" where you feel you are "above" others.

If you video recorded a standard weekly team meeting in most organizations, you might find that a large percentage of the words spoken every are intended to edge an individual's status higher, or edge other people's status lower. This bickering, the corporate equivalent of sibling rivalry, largely happens unconsciously and wastes the cognitive resources of billions of people.

The ongoing fight for status has other downsides. While competition can make people focus, there's will always be losers in a status war. It's a zero sum game. If everyone is fighting for high status, they are likely to feel competitive, to see the other person as a threat.

If you want to have a potentially threatening conversation with someone, try talking down your own performance to help put the other person at ease. Another strategy for managing status is to help someone else feel that his or her status has gone up. Giving people positive feedback, pointing out what they do well, gives others a sense of increasing status, especially when done publicly. The trouble is, giving others people positive feedback may feel like a threat, because of a sense of a relative change in status. This may explain why, despite employees universally asking for more positive feedback, employers seem to prefer the "deficit model", pointing out people's faults and performance gaps, over a strengths-based approach.

These two strategies—putting your status down and others' up-only help other people with their status, and may actually threaten yours. So where can you get a nice burst of confidence-inducing, intelligence-boosting, performance-raising status around here, without harming children, animals, work colleagues or yourself?

Getting a status-rush without harming others' statusThere's only one good (non-pharmaceutical) answer that I can find so far. It involves the idea of "playing against yourself." Why does improving your golf handicap feel so good? Because you raise your status against someone else, someone you know well. That someone is your former self. "Your sense of self comes online around the same time in life when you have sense of others. They are two sides of same coin," Marco Iacoboni explains. Thinking about yourself and thinking about others use the same circuits. You can harness the power of the thrill of "beating the other guy" by making that other guy (or girl) you, without hurting anyone in the process. To play against yourself gives you the chance to feel ever-increasing status, without threatening others. I have a hunch that many successful people have worked all this out and play against themselves a lot.

In summary—I think it's time we rethink self-esteem. Status appears to be a more accurate way of thinking about what self esteem is really about. It's a highly dynamic issue. By rethinking self-esteem we can create more accurate ways of intervening with those struggling with low status, like changing one's environment, or finding domains of life where one can experience higher status, or learning to play against yourself.

Great article...I very much enjoyed it. I wonder how you feel about those people who are the minorities in any given population. Perhaps they may find another group to feel superior to in some way, but if they feel the majority are indubitably superior in status, they may create a self-made ceiling which is psychologically impenetrable. Maybe it says something about racial/gender/age equality, and where our focus should be put...at the least something to consider i suppose.

Thanks for your comments. Indeed people in a minority are prone to feeling low status. I vaguely remember a study around Obama's election where test results of African Americans went up for a while - they stopped feeling that their status was beneath others and this affected their results.

That election is an example of a group suddenly gaining in perceived status. I was in Times Square myself that night and saw tremendous rejoicing that occurred, for many reasons of course, but a feeling of raising of status was indeed one of them. Status is a deep drive.

Having just completed CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) training, and thus looking at the world from a perspective of trying to do the most good for the most people, I find myself disagreeing heartily with the importance you place on status. In a triage situation, (a hurricane blows your neighborhood down), the rescue workers are not going to be checking the size of your wallet or asking you what kind of "status" symbol you clutch, they will check your pulse and your airway and guage the severity of your wounds, and even if your wallet is bulging, if your situation is dire, you cannot buy your way to safety. Status matters not in a life or death situation, so why should I be fooled into thinking it matters within the rare tranquil lulls? Granted, you noted intelligence on your list of status symbols, and, though I see where you're heading with your reasoning, I tend to see intelligence as a necessity, not a glitzed and gilded trinket that serves no purpose than a boost of ego like a diamond ring or giant rims on an uneconomical bulk...when I bought a fishing pole last week, I wasn't thinking of status, I was thinking, "I can catch a fish or two and feed myself," not, "Whoa, this fishing pole is going to make me the envy of the shoreline!" Although, I'll admit that I did calculate the cost vs payoff of the venture ($30 pole, $10 licence, gas per trip, time sunk, lures, bait...these measured against the average cost of fish at the market, all in all, just to break even, I will need to catch quite a pile of fishes...but still, status hasn't yet bobbed into my decision-making wave.)

My point is not so much that trying to increase one's status is the be-all-and-end-all driver of behavior - actually it's one of 5 major social drivers, any of which can be bigger than status. The others are certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness. (For a full explanation of this, google a paper I recently published called 'Managing with the brain in mind'.) For some individuals, (such as health workers perhaps), an issue like fairness will perhaps be more rewarding than status. (And in an emergency situation, the big driver will be to preserve life, something else entirely).

With regard to status specifically, I said in the paper that advertisers would like us to think status is about the size of your watch, but the fact is it's not - status can be about whatever you think is important. A person who gives more of their time freely as a volunteer has higher status in a volunteer community. They feel good as a result of this high status, it's intrinsically rewarding.

That wasn't my central point though. My main point was more that when you do go fishing, and catch a bigger fish than you've ever caught before, you're going to most likely feel a rush of excitement. And here's the point - that rush isn't a 'self-esteem' rush, it's a status rush - in this case, the person you are better than is yourself, but in the past. A status reward occurs whenever we feel 'better than' another (including ourselves) in any domain we feel is important.

I believe there is value in researchers starting to understand that our feelings of 'okayness' are deeply relative, and relative to both people around us and ourselves.

Knowing we're driven to feel 'better than' explains so much human behavior to me. For example, I expect the drive for status makes many fishing trips into a tiring competition - instead of the relaxing adventure they could be - though I have a hunch that wont be the case for you. All the best.

this very well explains the challenges i've encountered adjusting at work. Prior to moving to a new place of employment, i came from a managerial position. My new job is a non-management position with a relatively easy workload, i still found myself unable to focus. im usually a very adaptable person, i couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. and there were other factors that compounded my under-productivity.

Whatever happened to self validation and emotional maturity? Do some people simply stop growing beyond adolescence?

I agree that the observations and insights presented have utility, and apply profoundly to many if not most adults. It would seem there is a continuum of affect between external and internal validation, one through which we should progress as we age and gain life experience. Too often this does not appear to be the case. I take that as an indictment of our materialistic, shallow culture, producing too many emotionally stunted, insecure individuals.

Also, thanks for closing with ‘Getting a status-rush without harming others' status’. That was… well, kind of sweet.

Thanks for your comments. 'Disturbing' is a good word for it...indeed it was disturbing the first time I noticed that a tremendous and frighteningly large percentage of human endeavours are driven by people wanting to 'look good' to others, to increase their status, or to avoid looking bad. But it does seem to be the case that this is a very deep and strong human motivation. It's not necessarily a bad thing - the drive can be used for many purposes including positive change in the world. A great book for further reading (of course aside from Your Brain at Work, my new one!), is 'Status Anxiety' by Alain De Botton. A deeply disturbing book, though in a good way.

I just found your blog via your mindfulness post. Your research and interests seem to be along the same lines as my own. I look forward to reading your book!

As I read through this article, my mind instantly wondered: are some people are more intensely subjected to the neurological affects of perceived status changes than others? Can the same incident cause dramatically different neurological affects depending on the person? I'm guessing yes, but is there research that shows it?

The reason I'm asking is both academic and personal. I have anxiety issues. Intellectually, I'm quite divorced from them and I can often understand specific incidents after the fact quite clearly. However, I can't seem to stop the incidents with my rational mind. And, often, the incidents are related (I think) to the affect you're talking about here. It's like my brain has this dramatically overblown reaction to minor incidents. I break out in a light sweat and get a stress buzz in ridiculously non-threatening situations.

Because of this, I'm curious if some people are just born more sensitive to the peaks and valleys of status changes. Or, perhaps it is something that is a result of socialization (or a combo of genetics and socialization). Whatever the case, I think these ideas have potentially far-reaching consequences for people who suffer from social anxiety. In fact, it sounds to me like the implication of your article is that we must really rethink the roots of social anxiety and how to treat it.

Speaking of treatment, I'm with you re: drugs. However, relating this back to mindfulness, do you think one can massage one's neurological reactions to perceived threats through behavior modification? Does practicing mindfulness have a general calming affect at the neurological level, or does it just help people get out ahead of their outward reactions to uncontrollable neurological reactions?

I know your question is directed at David, but as I have some experience both in emotion regulation research as well as mindfulness practice, I thought I'd share some thoughts.

First, the literature does indicate that certain "mindfulness"-type practices strengthen the top-down control that the prefrontal cortex exerts over the limbic system. Second, different emotion regulation strategies seem to be effective at various points in emotion processing.

For example, there's evidence that highly-experienced meditators can suppress the startle response (e.g., to the sound of a gunshot), entirely preventing the generation of an emotional response.

I don't know much about behavior modification, but it does seem that a mindfulness component that allows you to quickly identify the arising of emotion can be paired with a cognitive strategy to deal effectively with anxiety and other undesirable states.

I'm not a therapist, but I'd be happy to provide literature references.

I value your ideas and specifically in relation to the relativity of perception, and the reward/threat interpretation. Let me ask the following clarification questions:

1) The title of your article says: “Status: a more accurate way of understanding self-esteem.” my question is: more accurate than what?

2) I have always associated status with our desire for Esteem as opposed to Self-Esteem. Recently I wrote in an article: “while esteem is mostly about public perception – the desire to be esteemed or respected by others in order to gain status and acceptance, self-esteem is motivated by private beliefs and feelings – the desire for self-satisfaction, self-respect, self-confidence, achievement.” Any of these self-feelings is, as you suggested, relative to the context of the person.

Could you please clarify the differences between self-esteem and esteem in relation to status?

Very informative and thought-provoking article. I facilitate a group for teenage girls that addresses common stressors among teens and factors that impact self-esteem (i.e. rejection). I am often disturbed by the notion that healthy self-esteem occurs as a result of simply "believing in yourself". Although I do value the importance of self-confidence, I find that people (children and adults) in general often look for a point of reference when they attempt to define or measure their sense of self-worth. In working with my clients, it is my impression that there is less of a need to simply feel good about themselves, but rather feel good about themselves in relation to others. I particularly appreciate how you conceputualize this approach by recognizing the internal need to "feel better than..." and noting that competing against oneself is an option that I view as a healthy, safe, and constructive approach to increasing one's status. I welcome your input on how I might introduce this concept to teens and young adults or other suggestive reading.

I have read about the self-esteem model which uses two components, one being the belief in one's ability to be successful in achieving goals, and the other being the belief that one is a good and deserving person. Does the "status model" of self-esteem invalidate this model, or is it more accurately viewed as another component of self-esteem?

How about the society which I live in where status is denied. Having moved from the UK to Denmark I see an awaful habit here of denying status. Even so you cannot avoid the reality of educational and financial differentials. Envy is a plague here yet everyone persists in deny statuts differentials. They even deny praising obvious achievement.

In my region, the poorest and most socialist, the people are very "inverted snobbish". Hence any real achievement is openly devalued. I find the whole think absurd but it does not work so much in Copenhagen where there are significant differentials which matter more in an expensive city. Many expats, like myself, who have good prospects and status are often sniped at and ignored. Hence we have a large network to help each other.

One has to assume that status is a local observable which cannot be denied and no matter how you denigrate and try to level another persons situation, the fact exisits that some have more and do more than others. That the neighbours enjoy great holidays in Italy becasue they have more resources does not make them any better but you cannot kill the envy. By and large the Danes are far from the happiest nation on earth. They are simply smug, somewhat naive as to the reality of a global society and keep deluding themselves about their peers. They also pop a lot of "happy pills" and really have low self-esteem. This means they are easily intimidated and scared off- hence their stand-offish nature in trying to avoid a status reminder. You have to experience it to believe it.

I now tease them. "Well, they are better aren't they? I say. "Their high taxes are a damn sight more than you offer the soeciety". This really irritates them. On a further matter, most people I know are financially better off than me (higher status). However, I am a well-educated guy and like and respect these people. The educated level is where we connect, not at the job description/cash level. We know we made our choices and the rewards will be different. Not an issue at all.

While you might see self-esteem as a local issue the nature of our social relations can work for or against these status differences. In Denmark there is a defensive perspective, a protective one. The low staus of one party is framing the interaction and that is a loser position. We must communicate as understanding and compassionate equals, wanting to listen and engage. Too often the conversational dice are loaded. This is why Danes underplay job, income and goods when you meet them. Still, they have to find out at some point and they are fiends for material gain and lending for image promotion (hence the high debt here). What a social mess!

The gist of this article jibes with my own experiences as a partner, employee, manager, student and professor. I like the "playing against oneself" solution, and think it's actually used in many companies where individuals set their own performance goals, which they have to meet/exceed to obtain a bonus.

The article suffers from several grammar mistakes, and it made it harder to understand a few sentences. I'm sure it would be even better if you could fix them (and improve the status of Psychology Today) :)